Thread regarding IBM layoffs

Yes there are several emulators that have come and gone over the years. You need rather deep pockets to play here as IBM defends this territory ruthlessly. Your lawyers will be busy

To clarify, I meant third party emulator, not yet another IBM lock-in product.

I believe you are asking about IBM Cloud Pak.

Serious question, somewhat relevant to this thread, but off-topic to the forum in general, except that if successful it would mean further layoffs for IBM down the road. Anyhow, my question:

I know it would not be easy, but are there any technical obstacles actually preventing the creation of a virtual mainframe running on a cloud? For example, if somebody created a viable emulation of a 20 year old (to avoid IP issues) IBM mainframe how many customers could migrate how much of their legacy code onto it?

IBM is just capturing what they know best. The mainframe stack. No one else is playing there, and no one else will mount a credible charge due to the age of the applications. The coders are long gone, and there are sections of code buried in the installed mainframes that no one has touched in years and years. Remember year 2000 and how IBM had to hire every 70 and 80 year old back to make sure the code would cross over. Well it’s 20 years later and those coders are gone. IBM has bet its future on a niche product line that isn’t going away. (if you haven’t switched by now, you are never going to switch). IBM will modernize your presentation layer to be in the 2020’s and take over running your legacy (can you say service bureau). That’s the future of IBM. It will generate 50-60 billion a year and employee approx 200-225k of employees around the world. IBM Will dabble in technology via their labs, modernize Linux In their vision of go to market, as they are the major contributors, and farm their IP. They’ll streamline services to focus on primarily mainframe and sell the rest Look for most of the re-org of IBM to be over by XMAS. Don’t be surprised if IBM and Google form a strategic alliance. Google wants to be number three in cloud, and IBM has the customers to get them there IBM has assists google wants (enterprise customers, a sales force into those customers, power, a patent portfolio second to none, a cloud infrastructure outside of softlayer/Intel, and Redhat. That’s more than enough for google to ask the old girl to the dance.

I've been saying for years that IBM Cloud is all vapor.

Interesting recent newsletter from Cloudwars.co: Azure is flooring it! Microsoft/Azure wants to be the "world's computer". That's a lofty and admirable goal. It appears they can make a run at this. Why doesn't IBM, the former King of Computing, seek this goal? IBM, unfortunately, wants to remain the world's mainframe computer which means a slow decline into eventual complete irrelevancy. What serious IT shop is not trying to figure out how to get off the mainframe. It is inevitable, at some point in the future, that someone will figure out the recipe of how to migrate off the mainframe.

IBM completely missed the Cloud boat. There is no way to catch up. IBM has single digit market share in public cloud Infrastructure and platform as a service revenues. Look at the history of other past IT wars like Networking (Cisco), CRM (Salesforce), and ERP (SAP). The market leader(s) in market share and perception always win big once dominance is established when the market hits mainstream adoption. AWS and Azure are dominating in Cloud as it now goes mainstream. Google looks like the third top player. Cloud Chapter 2 is going to be a mirage for IBM.

KIB. It was posted on this board approx a week ago. Google “TSS and IBM layoff” There were approx 15 comments all of which like you asked for details. None were forthcoming from the poster. The main thread said a Costa Rica company possibly owned by IBM was the buyer

@iry+15cM2dvg Where do you see IBM sold TSS? Very curious.

I don’t view this in the same lens as HP. HP broke into two separate divisions HPE (all things Enterprise related), and HP (all things Intel, and Ink related). IBM seems to be pursuing just the all things Mainframe related, with a little enterprise power and storage thrown in. NOTE IBM has an inside track here in that they have a monopoly, and a very loyal customer set. That is way ahead of where HP/HPE was when they broke apart. I view IBM’s strategy as Mainframe (monopoly) with a strategic partnership to extract their 20 year investment of IP on everything else. If the 85% rule is really true (85% of IBM’s business comes from 1000 big iron customers) then it’s quite a smart strategy to streamline the company, and become profitable again. It’s all in the execution, as the everything else doesn’t contribute to the bottom line after removing IBM’s 30% overhead premium

We've been hearing about spinoffs for years. It never happens and probably never will. Many of these businesses may be low margin and and zero (or negative) growth but they still throw off a lot of cash flow, which is needed to keep paying the dividend, which is all the small group of insiders that control IBM care about.

If IBM breaks up the company like HP did, the stock might actually be worth something.

This strategy certainly supports the other threads that have gone quiet during the 30 day notice period It’s all about mainframe and exploiting its legacy/monopoly

Quiet threads

1. IBM sold TSS (withdraw from non-aligned businesses)
2. IBM has sized spinning storage (everything except DSXXX and IP), and low end (scale out) power off
3. IBM has eliminated the overlap of Redhat and IBM cloud legacy offerings (services rightsizing)
4. IBM has sized spinning off perform services operations (eliminate low margin businesses)

The new CEO has publicly stated he is open to divesting parts of the company that don’t align with his strategy (mainframe?) I expect more details from the above 4 before year end